Apollo vs Demeter

Recap

This is the Temple of Demeter. It was dedicated to both Demeter and Apollo. It sits in Sangri, Greece on the island of Naxos in the Aegean Sea. Naxos is 166 square miles, making it equivalent in size to New Orleans. You can do a cruise around the Greek Islands, including Naxos for 45 euro a person for an 8 hour cruise. The primary export of Naxos is marble. Naxos backwards is Soxan which means wet socks in Welsh.

An good diss rhyme would be:

The last time I went over to Eric Brach’s
I came back stinking like two wet socks

(Eric Brach’s house actually smells lovely, by the way.)

And now, here’s Brach with the recap from last night’s game:

Demeter and Apollo had a great game in the Sepulveda Basin last night.

First thing best thing, does it seem like the drive up there is much faster than it used to be? I remember winter league games of old where it felt like I would never arrive. Last night, traffic was light and breezy. A+ for the billion dollars LA DOT spent to get me to games in the valley up to 20 minutes faster. Finally, some politics that unite us.

Second thing, it was Emily Haranin’s birthday last night! So that was cool. She didn’t mention it until halfway through the game (and halfway into the 100 or so pushups she did on the sideline during the game. Luckily, she does have a license for open carry… FOR THEM MASSIVE GUNS.)

Thirdly, our team and some of our opponent’s team met at Springbok after the game and had a great apres-disc. PRO TIP for all our opponents, here’s Demeter’s offense: the seven people (or last seven left, if more attend) at the bar after the game get to be starting offense in next week’s game. Go ahead and try to defend it; it’s nigh unstoppable! Also, a special shout-out goes to the patrons at Springbok before us who did not finish their chocolate cake before leaving. It was outstanding, and good manners aside, just about everyone at the bar from both Demeter and Apollo can attest that it was, indeed, delicious. (Please, people: Don’t let good cake pass you by just because some stranger ordered it and left it there. That’s just BIG BAKERY trying to play you.)

Okay, so the game. We stole a great idea from Poseidon: having both teams meet up for a joint spirit circle before the game even starts. I love this — you get to see your friends on the other team; you get to make some new connections on both squads… it’s a reminder that everyone’s here to have fun, and it got us all off to a very frisbee-forward start before the game even began.

As for the game, it went very, very quickly. Demeter had a short line last night – only 7 guys and 5 women, one of them being pick-up Maria “Papa” Kazan-o-Rama, which meant that everyone got lots of playing time. The math — 4 guys and 3 girls on the line, 3 guys and 2 girls on the sideline — meant that at least one guy and one girl was going to be playing back-to-back points. It actually was a great number — any fewer would have been really hard and tiring, but as it was, the tight lines helped our squad get into a groove. Quite a groove it was, too — Demeter went up 6-0 right off the bat.

6-0 was a tough hole for Apollo to try to dig out of, and try they did mightily – Amy and Kwok ran some very nifty handler games to change angles of attack before unleashing nice deep shots, and Xavier is incredibly fast and very difficult to guard — he roasted us a number of times, even when we knew hucks to him were likely to come. But still, 6 points is a lot to come back from, and Demeter ended up winning 15 to 7.

A big shout-out to Apollo, who stayed for a short mixed scrimmage after the game, and whose lyric poetry inspired a solid cheer out of Demeter… about meeting at the bar. 🙂 Also, thanks to the Horae, the Greek gods and goddesses of scheduling, who maybe just put our game in the valley on an exceptionally low-traffic day.

Springbok has been used now, and so has the Barrel. Has nobody gone back to Robin Hood? Sad. Will it end up as a blip in the history of LAOUT? Mean waitresses and dart players you have to avoid dying from. Oh, I miss it so.

Happy birthday Emily! Can I get two tickets to that show?

And now, here’s a recap from Liverpool. Liverpool the city is exactly 2351 miles by boat and car to Naxos, Greece. It’s 41 hours without traffic. But….

So you gotta factor that in.

Oof. That was a tough game for Apollo. Demeter has lots of speed and lots of huck game. Naturally, Apollo does as well, but for our part our throws were just not connecting all night. Even the dumps and some up-line passes were proving to be a nuisance for us. Demeter did a great job using their speed and field awareness on Defense, which did not help our case. Apollo did not get on the board until the 7th point in the game. At halftime it was 8-2 Demeter. At some point in the first half Demeter used their stall power, unfortunately I don’t have it marked down on the score sheet whether it was successful or not, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say it was.

Oh by the way, ahead of the game in our Spirit Circle, Brach and I and our teams each agreed that since not all of us had hats, we would just both use the stall power. Anyway, Apollo fared a little better in the second half, our Defense really kicked it up a notch. Orbit and Xavier both had some great D’s, and Kwok came out of nowhere to support Dylan on a deep huck D as well. I toyed with changing up our Offense, and probably should have, but I was hesitant with a narrower field at Sepulveda Basin. Maybe next week. We did use our stall power on a point that we pulled to Demeter, but after turning a few times it failed and Demeter scored. they went on to win the game 15-7.

Major props to Sully, Poppa, Rico and Biz on green team, they were definitely forces to be reckoned with their deep game. And Sully definitely has that field awareness I mentioned earlier, shutting down throwing lanes swiftly. Thanks Demeter for a good show, and happy Fourth of July everybody! I am looking forward to everybody coming back after beer and hot dogs and fireworks, ready to kick some ass next week.

Interesting. Both teams did the stall power and abandoned the hat power. Do people not bring hats to games? You gotta prepare folks. I always wear a hat when I play, so I’m biased. It started as a way of keeping the sun out of my eyes, but it’s morphed into a way to cover up my bald spot. #honesty

Kudos to the spirit circle before the game. You’ll read more about spirit circles and spirit time-outs in another recap coming later today. I think it’s been helping. I hope it has at least.